SHANE Long believes that Saints can hold their heads high after the 3-1 defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad.

Long scored his fifth goal of the season in all competitions to make it 2-1 in a vastly improved performance in the second-half by Ronald Koeman’s side.

It looked like Saints might fight back to get something from the game after the Irishman’s headed goal on 49 minutes.

However, the damage had already been done in a frustrating first-half display, which saw Saints go into the break 2-0 down after Kevin De Bruyne and Fabian Delph's scored.

When Aleksandar Kolarov netted City’s third with 20 minutes left it ended any hopes of a famous comeback, but Long was pleased with how Saints rallied.

The 28-year-old replaced top-scorer Graziano Pelle, who was banned for the game, to make successive starts.

“Yes, it was nice to get back into the run of things,” he told BBC Radio Solent. “Obviously big boots to fill today in Graziano and I enjoyed it up there.

“I was pleased with how I performed and it was nice to get the goal and, at the time, I thought we were right back in it.

“I felt like we were going to keep going and get the second, with a few good chances.

“But Man City, where they are in the league, they’re a big team and they punished us sometimes and they got two good goals in the first half and when we were pushing for the second, they punished us.

“It’s frustrating but we can hold our heads high, at least we didn’t roll over. At least we gave it a good shot after 2-0 down and caused them a lot of problems.”

Saints were 2-0 down within 20 minutes as City made a rampant start.

“It was tough in the first few minutes,” explained Long. “They came out of the blocks really quickly and got really on top of us and caused a lot of problems.

“Two-nil down after 20 minutes, I think it showed the character of the lads to put ourselves together and get back into the game and from then on, I thought we dominated.

“We kept the ball, passed the ball well, caused them a lot of problems and to come out in the second-half and bring it to 2-1, I think the whole stadium could tell we were right back in the tie.”

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The striker was pleased that Saints never gave up and even made Manuel Pellegrini’s side wobble as they went searching for an equaliser.

“We’ve come here a few times in the past and gone 2-0 or 3-0 down and looked like there was no way back,” he said.

“But it showed the belief we had in ourselves that we kept trying to pass it around, kept trying to cause them problems.

“We did and we had a few chances to make it 2-2 and it just didn’t fall for us and Kolarov with a great finish for 3-1, it was always hard to come back then.

“We pressed them and ran in behind and caused them problems, but we go into two games next week and we can look back it this and see we put in a good performance.”